M. Parrish was such a famous artist that even one of the colors of the palette was named in his honor: “Parrish blue” (Parrish light blue). Although Maxfield Parrish was very different from other contemporary artists in his techniques, industriousness, search for models and many others, he went down in the history of American painting as the author of one painting, Dawn, which became his hallmark in the world of painting.
Brief biography of the artist
The biography of Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966) must begin with the fact that his father, Stefan Parrish, was an engraver and landscape painter. He had enough money and skills to give a lot to his son, who early showed the ability to draw. First of all, this is a worthy education: Maxfield graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania. At birth, the artist received the name Frederick, but, starting to work and earn money, he changed his name to the maiden name of Maxfield's mother. This name has turned into his creative pseudonym.
The first known works are illustrations. This is Baum’s 1887 collection “The Tales of Mother Goose in Prose”, illustrations for a collection of poems for children and “Arabian Nights” (“A Thousand and One Nights”). His magnificent works with elves, dragons, fairies were so understandable to children, so pleased them and introduced into a real magical world that the artist was immediately inundated with orders. As an illustrator, Maxfield Parrish collaborated with many magazines, becoming one of the stars of the “golden age of illustration” at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and creating many magazine covers.
He was very in demand, quite rich and famous for his illustrations. But the artist becomes sick, suffers stress and stops working on illustrations, turning to the landscape, the genre of his father. Parrish's oil painting, reminiscent of a drawing and a choice of subjects of the Pre-Raphaelites, was very different from the work of other artists in its unique, magical glow. Maxfield Parrish's paintings are exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Features of Parrish's style and technique
The artist’s style is easily recognizable: he wrote down the details of the work with great care and realistic accuracy and highlighted them, superimposing layers of paint on top of each other, alternating them and smoothing with varnish layers. Quiet light, peace comes from almost all of his paintings. They are pleasant and life-affirming, cheer up and add optimism.
Maxfield Parrish spent a lot of time creating landscapes for paintings in his workshop from stones and improvised material, using a variety of lighting using a variety of light sources.
In the artist’s paintings, brush strokes are not visible, everything is hidden from view. This takes the viewer into the magical world of the artist, who refused to illustrate fairy tales, but again created the magic of magic in his works.
Selection of sitters for paintings
Parrish posed for paintings, as a rule, by his relatives, friends and acquaintances. The artist justified this by the fact that he wants to convey in his paintings the "spirit of innocence", that is, most likely, freshness, non-stamping, as we would say today.
For the picture "Dawn", his daughter Jane posed for him. But the main sitter of Maxfield Parrish was first the nanny of the children, and then the housekeeper of the family - Susan Levin. It was with her photo that he painted female nudes in his paintings, her body was painted by a girl lying on the painting "Dawn", but her face was the face of Kitty Spence (née Ruth Brian Owen). Kitty Spence is the eighteen-year-old granddaughter of the American politician W. D. Brian, posing for him for the cover of Life magazine in 1922-23, for the paintings Canyon (1923), Morning (1922) and others.
The story of the creation of the picture "Dawn"
The painting "Dawn" was created by the artist for two years, most of which he thought about it, without starting work, leaving untouched the "beautiful white panel" that he always had before his eyes. In 1923, the finished work was presented to the public and highly appreciated. And by 1925, Maxfield Parrish's painting “Dawn” was already replicated in the form of lithography and became no less famous, according to contemporaries, as “The Last Supper” by Da Vinci or “Banks with E. Warhol's Campbell Soup”. True, many critics have noted that lithography does not fully convey all the charms of the original.
For the first time after the rejection of illustrations, the artist found a new direction in his work in his work: a combination of antiquity and American modernity. Only having managed to find and merge together the details of the past and the recognizable present that are so popular with contemporaries, having created a new shining fairy-tale world, the artist finds himself new.
The plot of the picture "Dawn" and its fate
The picture depicts a scene from life in Arcadia, a fabulous country where everyone lives simply, comfortably and happily. The light of the rising sun floods the canvas. Two young innocent girls, lying and leaning towards her, are full of light and joy.
Powerful columns and the gentle power of the mountains in the distance protect their peace, and flowering branches and the smoothness of the foreground surfaces give the picture the necessary tenderness and beauty. The real, tangible embodiment of the "American dream": a calm confidence in the future, the joy of being, beauty and harmony with nature made the picture the most beloved for a whole generation of US residents. The work was immediately praised by critics as a magnificent work of modern American art.
Who bought the painting immediately after the show, the “unknown” hid it from the eyes of contemporaries for 50 years, which also added to the canvas of popularity. This “unknown” turned out to be WD Brian, the grandfather of the model posing for the artist. Now the picture is in a private collection.
Picture by Parrish Summer
The picture Summer (in English “Summer”) can be considered typical for the work of Parish. In the picture, a naked woman sits on the edge of the lake in the shadow of the branches of a lushly flowering tree or bushes, lowering her feet to the water and closing her eyes. In the picture of Maxfield Parrish Summer, the air and everything around are filled with heat and sun. And the water of the lake, the jets of a waterfall running from the mountains and the mountains themselves in a haze give off cool freshness.
What exactly a woman does in the bushes is not clear, we do not see her hands. This "incomprehensibility" of the plot, the background landscape and the figure imitating antiquity are clearly taken from the Pre-Raphaelites, and the distribution of volumes in the picture (foreground plane + one more plane + one more, etc.) and the choice of color scheme are a tribute to the then flourishing modernity. The picture is certainly talented and good even in reproductions.
M. Parrish and his paintings today
Today, the artist’s paintings amaze the impression of radiance pouring on the viewer, the beauty of the amazing world created by the artist, into which we can easily enter, considering his work. The tale started by the artist in his illustrations found a continuation in his paintings. She lives even in the easily recognizable landscapes of Hampshire.
But the artist also surprises with his efficiency, the thoroughness of the finishing of his works, and the completeness (to the scrupulousness) of all his works.